Sony Corporation and its U.S. subsidiary, Sony Electronics, Inc., introduced an electronic music marker device which is capable of “bookmarking” a music clip while being played on a radio and, which, when synchronized with a gateway device such as a personal computer, is capable of recalling information related to the bookmarked music clip such as the name of the song, the artist, the album containing the song and so on. Using the electronic music marker device, a user can conveniently recall the music clip information that the user listened to on the radio at a later time without the need to memorize the information or wait hopefully for the disc jockey on the radio to provide that information. In this manner, if the user wants to, for example, purchase the music album which the user has marked using the electronic music marker device, the user can easily identify the necessary information related to the marked music clip from the e-marks provided by the electronic music marker device.
To download or obtain information corresponding to the bookmarked music clips, the user sets up an electronic music marker device account via the gateway device, and connects the music marker device to the server terminal of emarker.com web site. The information corresponding to the bookmarked music clips such as the name of the artist, the name of the song as well as the name of the album, for example, are transmitted from the server terminal to the user's gateway device for display thereon. However, given a large number of radio stations in most metropolitan areas, it is likely that the radio stations broadcast the same songs or songs from the same album in the course of a day or even afternoon. Additionally, listeners generally only listen to one radio station at a time, such that listeners do not know whatever the other radio stations may be broadcasting at that time, which may include songs that the listeners may be interested in listening to. In particular, the users of the music marker device, even if they have similar taste in music, may not necessarily be listening to the same radio station at the same time and bookmarking the same broadcasted songs.